The US President sent his son-in-law to meet Hamas, so as to more effectively pressure the government of Israel.
That is the kind of sentence that, even just a few years ago, would have been assumed to be speculative fiction – or, if it was real, would set off weeks of outraged headlines, especially if it happened under a Democratic president.
But, it is exactly what Donald Trump did over this weekend, and there is barely a mumble of Republican outrage. Jared Kushner, with former UK prime minister Tony Blair in his entourage, met senior Hamas leaders in Cairo on Sunday in something of a desperate bid to revive Trump’s peace plan for Gaza.
Eurostar rival finally gets go ahead – everything we know
Incoming Eurostar rival Virgin Trains has been granted track access for new services between London and Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam in 2030.
It marks a step closer to ending Eurostar’s monopoly. The trainline has operated without competition for nearly 32 years.
Approval lasts for 10 years
- The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) has given approval for Sir Richard Branson’s company to run up to 20 daily services through the Channel Tunnel between October 2030 to December 2040.
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Virgin Trains in Eurostar stations
- In October, Virgin Trains was told it could share Eurostar’s Temple Mills depot in east London.
- Temple Mills is the only depot that can be accessed from High Speed 1 – the line that runs between London and the tunnel.
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‘Still more work to do’
This is an important next step in bringing competition and growth to the market for international rail services, and we welcome the progress and London St Pancras High Speed have made. While there is still more work to do, we are supporting and the wider industry to grow international services.
Martin Jones, Deputy director of access and international
What next?
Despite just clearing a major regulatory hurdle, Virgin Trains has yet to secure access to other rail networks.
It must also obtain safety approvals from the ORR and relevant regulators in the EU before services start in 2030.
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The weather to expect for the rest of the summer
While temperatures are expected to drop this week after the UK’s fifth heatwave brought a record 38.1°C – it appears the relief will be only temporary.
Another heatwave is expected to descend on the UK next month, the Met Office has warned, after a month of unprecedented hot and dry conditions.
A September heatwave
The Met Office has predicted that there is a chance of a late-season heatwave developing in September as the UK moves into the meteorological autumn.
The forecaster said there was “a chance that late-season hot spells or heatwaves develop” in the south between 31 August and 14 September.
Northern areas to see ‘more changeable conditions’
The Met Office predicts “drier, more settled weather is slightly more likely towards the south and east. Temperatures are again likely to be near to or above average overall”.
While the south may see more heat, there will likely be “more changeable conditions” in the north and northwest of the country as autumn begins, the Met Office said.
Rain to fall after record dry July
Looking to the weekend, BBC Weather forecasts up to a 58 per cent chance of rain on Sunday, 23 August.
The following week could also see some rain, with BBC Weather predicting showers on Thursday, 28 August and Friday, 29 August – some respite after the driest July on record across England.
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Where does the Gaza peace deal stand?
US envoy Jared Kushner is in the Middle East today for talks with key figures, following a rare meeting with Hamas’s leader yesterday.
Last month, Donald Trump’s Board of Peace said it had reached an agreement for the “complete disarmament” of Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
Here’s what you need to know.
Israel rejects Gaza peace plan
Hamas deal
Trump said Hamas had agreed to disarm if Israel withdraws its forces from Gaza. Israel rejected the 15-point plan, which calls for Gaza to be rebuilt under a new civilian Palestinian administration.
The Hamas deal breakthrough came nine months after a US-brokered ceasefire was signed, with negotiations between Israel and Hamas largely deadlocked since then.
US envoy to meet Netanyahu
Netanyahu rejects plan
The Israeli PM said his military would not withdraw from Gaza, warning there would never be a Palestinian state in Gaza under his leadership.
US envoy in Middle East
Trump’s envoy Jared Kushner is expected to meet Netanyahu today to discuss the US-backed Gaza plan. He met with with Hamas leader Khalil al Hayya yesterday.
What happens next?
Eight Muslim countries issued a statement on Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection.
While it’s not yet clear whether Kushner’s talks will be successful, one topic at the heart of discussions will be the disarmament process.
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Why average house price plunged by £7,360 in August
Average house prices nosedived by more than £7,000 this month- marking the biggest August price fall since 2018, according to new figures.
Property site Rightmove said asking prices fell by 2 per cent, or £7,360 month-on-month.
Rightmove downgrades annual house price projections
While prices usually fall in August, this is a much bigger drop than the 10-year average of 1.3 per cent.
The figures prompted Rightmove to downgrade its annual house price forecast for 2026 from a 2 per cent increase to between 0 and a 2 per cent fall.
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What is influencing the figures?
The average asking price for a home in Britain stood at £364,999 in August – 1 per cent lower than a year ago.
And it’s all down to the supply.
- The number of available homes for sale is at a 12-year high for this time of year.
- This, combined with the quiet summer holiday period, has led to lower price expectations from sellers.
- Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove, said the larger-than-usual price drop is a sign sellers are pricing much more competitively from the offset.
- “Buyers have the widest choice of homes for sale at this time of year in more than a decade, so standing out on price for the right reasons is hugely important,” she said.
A regional divide in property prices
But not everywhere is experiencing a dampening in property prices – as usual, there is a regional divide, Rightmove said.
In the North West of England, average asking prices are up by 1.9 per cent annually, beating out homes in London where prices have sunk by 3.1 per cent on average.
- The depressed figures follow a “mini bounce” in buyer demand since Andy Burnham became PM.
- Buying activity, however, remains roughly 10 per cent below 2025 levels due to the changing picture for mortgage rates, geopolitical uncertainty and October’s Budget spooking potential buyers.
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Everything you need to know about Reform’s welfare overhaul
Reform UK is preparing to unveil the biggest shake-up of the welfare system “in a generation”, with plans to abolish personal independence payments (PIP) for working-age adults and save an estimated £50bn a year.
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‘We will not pretend this is painless’
Nearly three million people would see their disability or sickness payments withdrawn or changed under the plans.
The party’s treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick, set out the proposals in an article for , ahead of a full 50-page policy paper due on Monday. He has acknowledged the human cost directly, writing: “We will not pretend this is painless.”
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What is Reform proposing?
- Reform would scrap PIP and the health element of universal credit for working-age adults. Both would be replaced with a new “health security allowance”, a single, regularly reviewed payment.
- Only claimants with “severe, enduring and high-risk” conditions would qualify for that cash support.
- Everyone else currently receiving disability-related payments would lose their cash entitlement altogether.
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A closer look at the detail
Those who would lose access to payments would instead be supported through council-run disability support accounts.
Reform estimates that 2.16 million would keep their present cash entitlement in full, while 2.89 million would see theirs modified or withdrawn.
Child payments impacted
- The party plans to extend the same approach to children’s benefits, aligning the system for anxiety, depression and ADHD with the adult changes, though only for new claimants.
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Plans modelled on Dutch system
Reform would also place a new obligation on businesses with more than five staff to take out “return to work cover” insurance, which would pay for the cost of an employee’s first two years off sick, rather than the state covering that cost through benefits.
The scheme is modelled on the Dutch system, where Reform argues disability benefit applications fell by 40 per cent after similar reforms were introduced.
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Scientists hail malaria breakthrough – what we know
A new compound has been hailed “an exciting step forward” in the fight against malaria – which kills hundreds of thousands of people each year.
Researchers at the University of Dundee, who discovered the compound, say it has the potential to simplify dosing regimens for the treatment and prevention of the illness.
A ‘novel drug-like molecule’
The new compound, called cabamiquine, is described as a “novel drug-like molecule” that can be delivered in a single dose.
An early-stage clinical trial showed that when administered with a commonly used antimalarial drug called pyronaridine, it is both effective and has a favourable safety profile in adults and adolescents.
Larger trials on the horizon
The team said the findings support the development of the combination therapy for larger trials and children.
In 2024, there were an estimated 282 million cases of malaria and 610,000 deaths from the disease worldwide. Figures have been rising in part due to resistance to common malaria medicines.
An ‘exciting step forward’
This is an exciting step forward for a compound which has great potential to simplify dosing regimens for , a disease which causes hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. We are delighted to see how the compound… is progressing into a potential medicine.
Dr Beatriz Baragana, a member of the Dundee University team that discovered cabamiquine
The US managed to broker a nominal ceasefire in Gaza last October, and last month Trump announced he had transformed this into a permanent deal in which Hamas had agreed to a phased disarmament of its weapons and to hand over power to a new, technocratic Palestinian authority, in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza.
However, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, roundly and publicly rejected that deal, demanding full disarmament before any withdrawal of troops – and dismissing any possibility of a Palestinian state in the process. More than that, despite the nominal ceasefire, Israel is taking control of a larger share of Gaza by the day: currently, it controls about 60 per cent of the region, and has said it will increase this to 70 per cent.
Trump, desperate for a win after his Iran war stalled, has been trying to resurrect his Middle East peace plan – dispatching Kushner to deliver a deal. As President, Trump has more than 13,000 professional diplomats at his disposal, but Trump has always preferred to keep things in the family.
Kushner has no formal role with the US government, has never been appointed or ratified by Congress and is accountable to no one except the President, but is being trusted with some of the most sensitive diplomatic issues facing the federal government.
Some people might find a double standard in this. Between 2013 and 2018, Hunter Biden’s company made around $11m (£8m) for his work with the Ukrainian company Burisma (among other clients), a story that became a decade-long scandal for his father, Joe Biden – even though there was never any evidence Biden Sr even met Burisma, let alone did them any favours, while Hunter Biden never did any work for the US government.
By contrast, Jared Kushner has received $2bn (£1.5bn) in investment from Saudi Arabia alone, and is actively working as an international adviser while undertaking his role as his father-in-law’s off-books diplomat.
According to media reports, Kushner’s visit with Hamas was surprisingly friendly: the group reportedly restated its commitment to Trump’s peace plan, provided Israel did what the US promised it would. The meeting was followed by a joint statement by multiple Gulf states – including Kushner’s business partners – calling upon Israel to sign up to the deal.
That would appear to be the US engaging in a co-ordinated campaign of diplomatic pressure, working alongside Hamas and the Gulf states, against Israel – traditionally the USA’s closest allies in the region, something that would have been unimaginable even a year or two ago.
This is the kind of desperate move sometimes required in diplomacy, but the trouble for both Trump and Kushner is that it has almost zero chance of working. The third anniversary of the deadly October 7 attacks is approaching, making it an awkward time politically for Israel to sign an agreement with Hamas, given Netanyahu had promised to wipe out the group entirely in the wake of the atrocity.
Even more pressingly, Israel has its elections later in October, and Netanyahu is fighting for his political survival – meaning the prospects of him changing his hardline stance on Gaza are even more remote than normal. Signing any kind of peace deal that involved concessions to Hamas would be out of character for Netanyahu at any time. Doing so when it would spell the end of his own political career is essentially an impossibility.
Donald Trump is a man obsessed with projecting strength on the world stage. He wants world leaders to say “how high” when he says “jump” – but instead, he’s increasingly yelling into the void.
The President has alienated most of the USA’s traditional allies in Europe and across Nato. He had wooed several Gulf states to his side, but has burned their trust by putting them directly in the line of fire with his conflict with Iran. Relations between the US and Israel are the worst they have been in decades.
The President who became famous for “the art of the deal” now seems unable to get anything over the line. Try as they might, neither Jared Kushner nor Tony Blair is likely to break that trend for him.